If you zoom in on the photo Lost posted, you’ll see at the bottom of the “Scarlet Street” poster in the first display case to the right of the entrance, a small sign seems to read “USHERETTES WANTED.” Great photo.

The New York State Board of Censors?? While I wasn’t around in those days, I never would have thought that New Yorkers were so delicate and unaware of the concepts of adultery and murder that they had to be protected from the movies by a State board of censors. I’d heard of various private organizations like the Legion of Decency and a few others, but why was the State involved in that stuff? It sounds very ominous to me.

Whatever became of the Orleans Theatre that was located on one of the W. 40’s or 50’s Streets off of Broadway in NYC. I lived in Manhattan in 1969/70. I remember seeing one of my favorites there, “Last Summer” with Barbara Hershey, Bruce Davidson, Richard Thomas and Cathrine Burns. The marquee had two figures sitting on top of it as if they were in a New Orleans outdoor cafe. The Rod Steiger blockbuster “3 Into 2 Don’t Go” with Claire Bloom and Judy Geeson also played there. What is there today?????

The Sutton was already open in 1934. It became a major first run “sure seater” art house in 1947 with Powell & Pressburger’s I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING and for several years specialised in British imports.

ErikH made me think of the time I was lost in my own thoughts walking up 5th Av when Rizzoli was still there when I suddenly look up in front of the store and right in front of me are DeNiro and Streep holding shopping bags of Christmas presents. This was nowhere near Christmas and if there is a movie out there with this scene of the two of them standing in front of Rizzoli’s I’m probably somehwere in the vicinity off camera.

Wow! What a stunningly ordinary building – certainly adds something to the neighborhood – and doesn’t it blend in well with the buildings on either side of it? What is it, by the way – more desperately needed over-priced condominiums?

I drove passed the former theater’s site just a few hours ago and had my camera in the car. While stopped in traffic waiting for the light to change, I pointed over my shoulder (and through my moon roof for the 2nd shot) and captured the uninspired glass tower that has risen on the lot:

Regarding “The Devil’s Advocate.” While the scene may take place in the late afternoon in the film, it was shot in the early morning. I was living in the apartment building next door to the Sutton when the film was being shot. The exterior of my old apartment building (225 East 57th) doubled as the exterior of the hospital in the film.

I won’t soon forget walking through the lobby of 225 East 57th at about 7:00 on a Sunday morning, half-asleep and on my way to pick up a copy of the Sunday Times, and nearly walking into Keanu Reeves, who was covered in fake blood. That woke me up fast.

One movie made late in the 1990s cast a most memorable and eerie glow on the Sutton Theater itself. In the late reels of “The Devil’s Advocate,” lawyer Keanu Reeves leaves the hospital following his wife’s suicide and heads to the offices of law firm president John Milton (Pacino) to confront him. The scene, shot with an overhead crane, with traffic cordoned off out of view by the NYPD, and coupled with a soundtrack piece that deserved an Academy Award all by itself, features the Sutton, late in the afternoon, its former grandeur long behind it, and looking as forlorn and as desolate as Reeves' character. Superb cinematography!

After reading and posting this morning about dads and movies such as “Midnight Cowboy” (which I saw twice here in the same week), I thought this might be a good time to cross the river and bridge and post one here.

It was in front of the Sutton while on line in 1975 that a young lady “forced” me to sign an autograph for her because she was thoroughly convinced I was Henry “Fonzie” Winkler. Aaaay!

Back in ‘69, Newman & Woodward co-starred in a novel western about two minor bandidos of the old wild west. Intentional humor was pretty much a novelty in westerns of any era, so I fell in love with this one. (“Think ya used enough dynamite ther, Butch?”)

My dad was on disability at the time and rarely got out of the house. For his 11/1 birthday, I decided to treat him to subway fare, a cold six-pack of beer to carry with him, and the price of admission to see this movie at the Sutton. To my amazement, he went. To my even greater amazement, he actually LIKED it, this from a man who showed few visible displays of having any kind of sense of humor.

I never regretted that gift. It was the last movie he ever saw in a theater, and he passed away less than two years later, 3 weeks shy of his 60th. Glad you could make it, Dad…

I remember that same “wall-stretcher” ad used at the Avon Cinema here in Providence, where the film played quite a long time. After Marty was becoming very popular, this ad copy must have been sent out by United Artists to the theatres playing the film.

This was one of the better theaters in the Manhattan. I saw lots of films here with family and friends in the last 1970s and early 1980s, always an enjoyable experience. I hated it after they divided it into a twin theater, it’s lost all of it’s charm. I rarely went there afterwards. Still, it’s sad to hear of it’s demise.

Woody Allen did open his 1975 “Love and Death” simultaneously at the Sutton and Paramount (the subterranean theater at the Gulf and Western building near Columbus Circle) according to the New York Times online archive of movie reviews. Not the most scientific means of determining what films played where, but the Times often would continue the tradition of listing the premier or first-run house in its reviews through the ‘70’s and very early '80’s – before opening wide became the standard operating procedure. A look at reviews for some of Woody’s other films in the '70’s mention the 68th Street Playhouse, Baronet, Coronet and Little Carnegie theaters, but, interestingly, not the Beekman.

Woody’s contemporary Mel Brooks might have a stronger connection to this theater, opening both “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein” – widely considered his two best films – at the Sutton, each one at either end of 1974. While his bi-centennial follow-up “Silent Movie” had its NY debut at the Cinema 1 & 2 a few blocks away, Brooks returned to the Sutton for 1978’s “High Anxiety.”